


dying to dodge the truth

by slaymouse



Series: you’ve got time to figure it out [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fem!Michael, Gen, trans!michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 06:37:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4695869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slaymouse/pseuds/slaymouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s heard the word before, or at least some variation of it hurled as a slur from the mouths of his extended family when someone or other’s daughter coming out is brought up at Thanksgiving. However, he’s never really known the extent of what it meant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dying to dodge the truth

From the time he was old enough to understand the phrase “be quiet”, Alexander Jones had been going to church.

Early every Sunday, his dad would wake him while his mom made breakfast and after they’d eaten together, his father would help him into a suit and his mother comb his hair. They’d clamber into the family car and by 9:00 AM sharp, they were seated in pews until 10:00 o’clock.

As a young boy, it was expected that Alexander would squirm some, as did all of the children. By age nine, his parents had expected him to grow out of the habit, like all of the other kids eventually did, but Alexander only became more restless. Nonetheless, he kept his head down, twiddled his thumbs, and didn’t say a word to his parents; it was forbidden to talk over Father Paul’s sermons.

Aside from church once a week (with the exception of Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and the like), Alexander attended the Catholic school within his district. They prayed in the mornings, before lunch, and had daily carpet lessons about bible stories. But when Alexander moved from Jersey to Texas, advancing into middle school, the only Catholic school in town was too far from his house for him to attend.

Switching into a public environment worried his parents, but Alexander promised he would behave. And while he still begrudgingly attended church with his parents and behaved when they were around, he had grown tired of being his parents’ perfect little boy.

So, when labour day came around and he walked into school surrounded by new faces, Alexander began going by Alex, hung out with new friends who encouraged him to speak up more, and explored who he could be without the watchful reminder that “God was watching” everytime he stepped outside the ordinary.

  
  


The same year, in early July, he attended his friend Barbara’s birthday party. A cluster of thirteen year olds in their friend’s basement, eating pizza and watching movies didn’t seem like much, but it grew to be one of Alex’s fondest memories.

While Miles and Kerry worked in periodic shifts losing at Mario Kart to Ray, Barbara and Lindsay sat him down on the floor and painted his fingernails. When the task was said and done, and the paint dried enough that he could grab the controller from Miles because “it’s someone else’s turn to suck”.

“Why are your nails purple, Alex?” the boy had immediately questioned when he grabbed the controller and suddenly Kerry and Ray were both cluttered around to see too. Miles’s bony fingers dug into the flesh of his hand as he poked and prodded.

“It’s paint idiot,” Alex had said, swatting his friend away. He’d promptly turned to Barbara and demanded his own.

“That’s awesome,” Kerry commented, turning Lindsay and asking for green polish. Ray agreed that he wanted some too, but only if he got to kick Alex’s butt first.

His butt was indeed kicked, but by the end of the day, all of the kids went home with colourful fingernails, sugar highs, and bright smiles.

When he got home, he’d proudly shown off his manicure to his mother, who had only frowned.

“Nail polish is for girls, Alexander,” she’d scolded, taking his hand into her own to further inspect the offending varnish. “Go upstairs to the bathroom cupboard; there should be acetone and cotton balls in there.”

“Wait, you want me to take it off?” his smile fell, expression crushed. “I like it…”

A stern look was all the warning he received before his mom called his father in from the garage. He showed up with a sweaty forehead, and hands covered in grease from the lawnmower, “What’s wrong?”

“Alexander has decided that not only is he going to disobey me, but paint his nails too,” his mother said, glaring accusingly at her son. He shifted uncomfortably beneath her gaze.

His father tossed a sideways glance to Alex, who caught it uncertainly. They stared back at one another for a moment.

“Is this true, Alexander?”

“I didn’t mean to disobey her!” the preteen defended himself, scuffing his feet on the floor. “I just like them and don’t want to take it off. Ray, Kerry, and Miles have some too; Lindsay and Barb painted all of us!”

“Alexander,” his mom cut in again, “I don’t care what Ray or Kerry have done with their hands, nail polish isn’t for boys. Go clean it off.”

When he opened his mouth to argue his dad spoke first, “Alexander, if you don’t do as your mother says immediately, you’ll be grounded.”

Begrudgingly, the boy had headed upstairs to the bathroom. He slammed the door when he got there as a passive threat, but had gone into the cupboard nonetheless. And admiring the manicure one last time, stripped away the purple glitter until all that remained was a blueish hue to his nails.

The next time they meet up to play games at Ray’s house, everyone else still has their polish, albeit chipped, and Alex feels a little worse inside.

  


 

When Alexander is thirteen, hair begins to sprout on his upper lip. Fine and sparse as it may be, it makes his skin crawl and he immediately goes to his father, begging to teach him how to shave. His dad is unsure and promises to think about it, but Alex is relentless. For a week, he kisses up to his parents, completing every chore he can around the house.

After a week of this, his father takes him to the drugstore to pick out a razor and teaches him how to use it later that night. Afterwards, the razor is put in the cabinet and Alex plots in the back of his mind while thanking his dad.

Later in the shower, he shaves his armpits as carefully as he had his face and goes to bed feeling smooth and happy. He never tells his parents about the habit.

  


It’s when he’s in his freshman year of high school and sitting in the back of science class when Alex meets his first real crush.

They’re beginning to take notes on the cell cycle when there’s a timid knock on the door. His teacher disappears into the hall for a few minutes and when she returns, there’s someone with her.

It’s a boy with messy hair and green eyes that sit behind a nose that may or may not be too large for his face. He’s wearing a doofy grin and Alex’s pulse jumps.

“This is Gavin Free,” his teacher introduces the boy, who waves with a lanky arm. “He’s just transferred here and I hope you’re all mature enough by now that I don’t have to tell you to be nice.”

“Where do I sit, Ms.?” Gavin asks from beside her and Alex mentally curses; the prick just had to be fucking British.

Unfortunately for Alex, Gavin is seated on the opposite side of the room and he has to settle for staring out the window rather than at his new classmate.

Later in the cafeteria, Alex sits with his friends and loudly talks about XBox with Ray and Kerry. Beside them, Lindsay swats at Miles’s DS in an attempt to keep her lead in their Pokemon battle. Somewhere in the conversation, the newest Halo game comes up and moments later, a new tray plops down onto their table.

When Alex looks up, he almost chokes because who else would it be other than Gavin fucking Free.

“Halo’s top,” he says simply, sliding into the seat next to Ray who just looks at him. Finally, he just shrugs and continues his discussion.

He’s not quite sure when it happens, but at some point during lunch, the glory that is Gavin Free fades. Honestly, he’s just as big an asshole as the rest of them, yet somehow manages to make Alex angrier in the span of forty minutes than he’s been in two years (seriously, what person makes so many inhuman noises and talks like that?!?).

Nonetheless, Alex quickly gets over his little crush and pushes the notable fact that Gavin is very male away in favour of throwing his mashed potatoes at him.

  


 

At fifteen, while Ray, Alex, and Gavin play Minecraft online with one another. The game really consists of Gavin messing with the other two boys only for Alex to kill him.

“Hey, you know Tina Dayton?” Ray suddenly asks, distracting Alex from killing Gavin long enough for the squawking boy to flee.

“Uh, I think she’s in my Spanish class,” Alex comments. The girl is fairly quiet in class, but Alex thinks he remembers her for her nice hair.

“She’s kinda cool, right?” he says a moment later, his character going still on screen.

Gavin squeals in his ear, “Oh, Ray! You like Tina don’t you, you knob?”

“Shut up, Gav,” the other boy growls, but doesn’t deny the allegation. Alex keeps quiet, unsure of what to add to the conversation.

“S’alright, you salty bastard. There’s this bird, Meg- her locker is near mine. She’s pretty fit,” he gushes. Alex rolls his eyes, knowing that even if Gav thinks this chick is great, he’d never say anything about it; he’s a coward when it comes to shit like that.

“Really, Gav? Never would’ve pegged you for the feathers type,” Alex bites out quickly and he can just picture the frown that goes with Gavin’s grumble.

“You’re so quick to talk Alex,” Ray cuts in. “What about you, huh? Give us her name.” And honestly, Alex really has no idea.

Since a fiasco with Lindsay last year where they’d kissed and sworn to never do so again or tell another soul (because ew, they didn’t like each other like _that_ ), he hadn’t really been interested in anyone. To be fair, he hadn’t really liked Lindsay either, but both of them were curious and anxious to get their first kisses over with.

“There isn’t any girl,” and at Ray’s snort. “Really!” he insists and then they’re back to their usual antics.

Later however, after they’ve all signed off and long gone to bed, Alex thinks back to everyone he’s been attracted to in the past. At the end of it all, he hadn’t been lying really since there was no _girl_. There was however, a long list of guys and thus, a long list of reasons to be worried.

“Fucking shit,” he whispers in the dead of night because there’s no way this will bode well with his parents.

  


 

A year later finds Alex still hopelessly in the closet and particularly shaken after church one Sunday. He sits in his room alone and reminds himself that Christianity is his parents’ commitment, not his, and that he won’t hate himself over the prejudices of their God.

For months now, he’s gotten better at associating himself with the label gay (it only took an hour in front of his mirror repeating it), but something still doesn’t sit right in his gut.

From a hunched position on his bedroom floor, desperately trying to shake the incessant “wrong” feeling from his gut, he looks to his mirror. It only proves to make him feel worse and he’s still clueless as to why.

Time passes- it could’ve been minutes or hours for all Alex knows- and he runs a hand down his face. His eyes are wet and he suddenly realizes he’s been crying.

“Enough is enough,” he chokes and grabs his laptop from its place on his desk. He’s not sure what is it he’s looking for when he opens an incognito tab, but he knows that this has to stop. He _needs_ answers.

So, he spends the rest of the morning searching everything from the vague “why do I hate myself?” and “what’s wrong with me?” on Google to finally researching gay. It’s bound to have something to do with all this bullshit- right?

The first result is a page labelled “LGBTQ+ - Understanding Gender & Sexuality” and Alex selects it because really, what does he have to lose?

He skims the first few definitions, already too familiar as to what gay, lesbian, and bisexual meant, but stops at the fourth one: transgender.

He’s heard the word before, or at least some variation of it hurled as a slur from the mouths of his extended family when someone or other’s daughter coming out is brought up at Thanksgiving. However, he’s never really known the extent of what it meant.

 _Gender differs from the one they were assigned at birth._ And then- _Common examples include FtM (female to male) and  MtF (male to female)._ Something inside Alex’s head falls into place and his heart jumps. He clicks the link and for the next half hour, reads every definition and story he can on the topic.

Some of the people sharing their lives are as young as thirteen while some are well into their forties. For all of them though, something runs the same in the way Alex connects with each one; the lowkey buzzing in the back of his mind has finally cleared.

He thinks back to all of the discomfort with his body as he entered puberty, brushed aside by his parents as normal for the changes happening in his body. But no, the aversion to his own body hair makes sense now. As does the way he’d initially panicked when his voice deepened, if only slightly. Painting his nails, helping Lindsay with her makeup whenever he got the chance, and even the way he loved his hair when it grew out and tickled his shoulders just before his mother would send him to cut it.

Glancing over to his side again, Alex still felt something twist in his gut, but this time, it felt good to say he knew why. He stands up and walks to the mirror and just like before, begins to practice.

“I am transgender,” he whispers. In an afterthought he adds, “and I am utterly fucked.”

**Author's Note:**

> title from Foster the People's "Cassius Clay's Pearly Whites"


End file.
